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Today's Tidbits - Ed Jewett - 03-09-2009
Hey, folks, I'm not an avid, professional or even adept researcher-commentator on the older stuff, notably JFK/Dealey Plaza, but this stuff is jumping of the screne, and so I throw it into the ring without comment or intent:
1) circa noon GMT -5
Kennedy memoir calls Chappaquiddick 'inexcusable'
NEW YORK — Sen. Edward M. Kennedy wrote in a memoir being published this month that he made terrible decisions after the 1969 car crash that killed Mary Jo Kopechne, but said he was never romantically involved with her and was haunted by that night for his entire life.
He also wrote in "True Compass" that he accepted the conclusion that a lone gunman assassinated his brother President John F. Kennedy.
The memoir is to be published Sept. 14 by Twelve, a division of the Hachette book group. The 532-page book was obtained early by The New York Times and the New York Daily News.
In it, Kennedy said his actions on Chappaquiddick Island on July 18, 1969, were "inexcusable." He said he was afraid and "made terrible decisions" and had to live with the guilt for more than four decades.
Kennedy drove off a bridge into a pond. He swam to safety, leaving Kopechne in the car.
Kopechne, a worker with slain Sen. Robert F. Kennedy's campaign, was found dead in the submerged car's back seat 10 hours later. Kennedy, then 37, pleaded guilty to leaving the scene of an accident and got a suspended sentence and probation.
He wrote that he had no romantic relationship with Kopechne, and he hardly knew her. He said they were both getting emotional about his brother's death and decided to leave the party that was hosted by Robert Kennedy's former staffers.
Kennedy also wrote in the memoir that he always accepted the official findings on his brother John's assassination.
He said he had a full briefing by Earl Warren, the chief justice on the commission that investigated the Nov. 22, 1963, Dallas shooting, which was attributed to Lee Harvey Oswald. He said he was convinced the Warren Commission got it right and he was "satisfied then, and satisfied now."
In the book, Kennedy wrote candidly about his battle with brain cancer and his "self-destructive drinking," especially after the 1968 death of his brother Robert.
After his brothers' assassinations, Kennedy said he was easily startled at loud sounds, and would hit the deck whenever a car backfired.
He expressed regret over getting drinks with nephew William K. Smith in Palm Beach in 1991, after which Smith was charged with rape. He was later acquitted.
He also explained why he decided to run for the presidency in 1980, saying he was motivated in part by his differences with then-President Jimmy Carter. He criticized Carter's go-slow approach to providing universal health care.
As a 9-year-old boy at the Riverdale Country School in New York, Kennedy said he would hide under his bed, petrified of a dorm master he thought was sexually abusive.
The book was written with the help of a collaborator and was based on contemporaneous notes taken by Kennedy throughout his life and hours of recordings for an oral history project.
Kennedy died last week at age 77.
Copyright 2009 The Associated Press.
http://www.comcast.net/articles/news-national/20090903/US.Kennedy.Memoir/
#2) via www.whatreallyhappened.com
BBN, Raytheon and a fresh JFK conspiracy theory
A follow-up to a post from Tuesday
By Paul McNamara on Thu, 09/03/09 - 9:13am.
Because lots of good stuff goes unnoticed in comment strings ...
Earlier this week we learned that Raytheon, long one of the nation's most powerful defense contractors, is acquiring venerable BBN Technologies, a networking pioneer perhaps most famous for its role in designing the ARPANET, precursor to the Internet.
In writing about the deal, I included this footnote way done at the very end of the item: "History buffs will tell you that BBN is also known for having conducted acoustical analysis in 1978 for the House Select Committee charged with investigating the assassination of President John F. Kennedy 15 years earlier."
A reader who identified himself as V12Merlin offered this provocative tidbit in response:
"One of the BBN engineers who worked on the Kennedy acoustic analysis thing was a close friend of mine, from my own Cambridge days. He told me at the time that the team was ordered by someone high up NOT to publish what they actually found."
Now I've been a Kennedy assassination buff since reading a table-top version of The Warren Report in my grandparents' living room back in high school, but I'm neither willing nor able to vouch for the veracity of what V12Merlin's friend told V12Merlin some 30 years ago. However, another reader who identified himself as Joe Kraska, a former BBN employee living in San Diego, was in no mood to just let the comment slide. Writes Kraska of the alleged cover-up:
"Because, you know, as we know, the noodle-backboned folks working at BBN, having found the real origin of the assassination of an American president would have all the ethical prowess of a peanut, and keep mum quivering in their boots because a Mysterious Evil Power ™ ordered them not to tell the truth. We know now at least, how much faith you have in the fidelity of your fellow men. That's just sad."
And that's telling him, all right.
(Update: Not that I really want to venture too close to this rabbit hole, but I did find a Wikipedia entry that would seem to indicate BBN was a rather unlikely cover-up suspect. In fact, it was the company's analysis that led the House Select Committee to conclude that shots were fired at the presidential motorcade from both the Texas School Book Depository and the infamous grassy knoll. That conclusion, much like most anything else regarding the assassination, has been long disputed. ... Those less fearful of rabbit holes are free to read the entire entry, but here's the top of it:
In December 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations (HSCA) had prepared a draft of its final report which concluded that Lee Harvey Oswald had acted alone as the assassin. However, after hearing testimony regarding the Dictabelt recording, they quickly changed their findings and concluded a second gunman had fired a fourth shot at Kennedy (it was claimed that a fourth shot could be heard on the Dictabelt). G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel of the HSCA, later said, "If the acoustics come out that we made a mistake somewhere, I think that would end it." Despite serious criticism of the scientific evidence and the HSCA's conclusions, speculation regarding the Dictabelt and the possibility of a second gunman has persisted.
The Dictabelt recording does not contain audible gunshots, but investigators compared "impulse patterns" (i.e., suspected gunshots and associated echos) on the Dictabelt to 1978 test recordings of Carcano rifles fired in Dealey Plaza from the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository and from a stockade fence on the grassy knoll forward and to the right of the presidential limousine. Based on this, the acoustics firm of Bolt, Beranek and Newman concluded that impulse patterns 1,2, and 4 were shots fired from the Depository, and that there was a 50% chance that impulse pattern 3 was a shot originating from the grassy knoll. Acoustics analysts Mark Weiss and Ernest Aschkenasy of Queens College, after reviewing the BBN data, concluded the probability was 95%.
So if, as was intimated by the friend of V12Merlin, there really was an order from on high that BBN technicians "not publish what they actually found," well, those squelched findings must have been pretty darn spectacular.)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/44953
Today's Tidbits - Ed Jewett - 04-09-2009
Alright, then, I'll go first...
On the second item, I'm not sufficiently technically adept nor up on the tight specifics of the gunfire analysis issues to even begin to comment. I posted it because sometimes there is some "clue" as to the meaning of the new information in its release date, manner, source, etc. and those who are up on the specifics can spot something of meaning, or be able to label it as disinformation, or whatever.
On the first item, however, this is of general enough nature and given the recent death of the man and all the speculation and chatter surrounding it that the question must be raised "Why did Teddy say that he was satisfied with the conclusion of the Warren Commission?".
Aside from the deeper and more obtuse elements and perspectives, I have empathy for a man who saw his two older brothers assassinated and who, consequently, must have been in a deep, long-term cycle of shock, psychological trauma, anger, grief, et al. And then to continue to go to work on a daily basis in the very center of power where those and many other questions lay more open to his inquiry and knowledge (or maybe not).
As a mere citizen, I have been continually assaulted and traumatized by the events of deep politics, so I have a smattering of feeling for what someone of very close proximity must have gone through. Recently, in discussing my own post 9/11 grief/ shock/anger reaction, someone said to me "denial is a gift from God".
Without getting into a debate about God's gifts or the validity and accuracy of that expression in general, or in my case, or others, it might be surmised that Teddy, after much immersion in his own self and familial experience, might well have felt that it was worth it, for the sake of the surviving Kennedy generations, to say simply "I accept the Warren Commission findings" as a way of vaccinating his family against further traumas, both real and psychological. Whether he really meant what he said can only now be answered by Kennedy family insiders who must grapple with the same issues, or by Teddy's intimate confessors, whomever and however high they may be in the human or spiritual world.
That said, however, the rest of us still have to grapple with the ongoing cultural and political presence of what happened in Dealey Plaza, the Ambassador Hotel, the World Trade Center and countless other locations and scenes in the world of deep politics.
Recently I was also struck -- when reading "Mind Over Matter" by K.C. Cole -- by the parallel between those who attempt to fathom the secrets of the cosmos and those who try to fathom what happened decades ago, though it be shrouded.
Says Cole, "One can't travel into a black hole without getting crushed into oblivion. But that doesn't rule out riding into those dark recesses with the help of mathematics and imagination." [By imagination, she means the tools of science, purpose, calibration, accuracy of terms, thesis, hypothesis, synthesis, etc.]
What conceivable good is it to study black holes? Progress isn't always clear, and purpose seems uncertain to some. But the answer might be the same for those who plumb the depths of the galaxies and those who attempt to understand deep political events, echoed in Faraday's response when asked the value of his explorations of electricity: "Of what use is a newborn baby?"
We have faith that the study of the black holes of deep politics might, as is postulated about the black holes themselves, show us the inverse white hole on the other side. and lead to a better understanding and new insights of the deep space of human politics.
Today's Tidbits - Myra Bronstein - 04-09-2009
Ed Jewett Wrote:Alright, then, I'll go first...
On the second item, I'm not sufficiently technically adept nor up on the tight specifics of the gunfire analysis issues to even begin to comment. I posted it because sometimes there is some "clue" as to the meaning of the new information in its release date, manner, source, etc. and those who are up on the specifics can spot something of meaning, or be able to label it as disinformation, or whatever.
On the first item, however, this is of general enough nature and given the recent death of the man and all the speculation and chatter surrounding it that the question must be raised "Why did Teddy say that he was satisfied with the conclusion of the Warren Commission?"...
I'm disgusted with Teddy. I'm not as poetic as you Ed. I'm just disgusted.
Today's Tidbits - Bernice Moore - 05-09-2009
Hi Ed;
''On the first item, however, this is of general enough nature and given the recent death of the man and all the speculation and chatter surrounding it that the question must be raised "Why did Teddy say that he was satisfied with the conclusion of the Warren Commission?". ''
I believe I read that it was Earl Warren that explained the W/C findings to Ted...which findings came to mind..?.first report, that they changed the ..FBI..... nothing of course would have been revealed to him that was deliberately left out, and overlooked....as well as hidden within......
The most rediculous theory I have ever read on the JFK Assassination is the W/Cs....
Today's Tidbits - Myra Bronstein - 05-09-2009
Bernice Moore Wrote:Hi Ed;
''On the first item, however, this is of general enough nature and given the recent death of the man and all the speculation and chatter surrounding it that the question must be raised "Why did Teddy say that he was satisfied with the conclusion of the Warren Commission?". ''
I believe I read that it was Earl Warren that explained the W/C findings to Ted...which findings came to mind..?.first report, that they changed the ..FBI..... nothing of course would have been revealed to him that was deliberately left out, and overlooked....as well as hidden within......
The most rediculous theory I have ever read on the JFK Assassination is the W/Cs....
Good article on the FBI "leaks" Bernice. It certainly underscores how the FBI gave the WC its "conclusion" at the outset.
Today's Tidbits - Ed Jewett - 05-09-2009
Oh, yes, Bernice, I am generally familiar with all of that... I wasn't trying to defend Teddy, and I certainly wasn't advancing the WC conclusions or anything close to them. I share Myra's sentiments, though perhaps at a kinder level, and I'm simply trying to explore the reasons for Teddy's statements given his awareness [he had to be aware, no?] of the voluminous research that has been done since December '63, and their conclusions as expressed by so many here and elsewhere.
I'm not, at this late hour and certainly not in this forum -- nor in the past or in any other forum --, trying to say that Oswald acted alone and that we should put the matter behind us. Quite the opposite, despite even what, for reasons that are obscure, the recently-deceased majordomo of the family said.
I agree with the thoughts recently expressed by Charles Drago.
As the protagonist in the movie Ronin said, "If there is any doubt, there can be no doubt." I'm a big fan of visceral intuition as a learning agent.
The attempts at cover-up alone tell the story.
If you look at the matter as if it were a negative of a photograph and turn it inside out and reverse the imagery, voila!.
Today's Tidbits - Bernice Moore - 06-09-2009
Ed Jewett Wrote:Oh, yes, Bernice, I am generally familiar with all of that... I wasn't trying to defend Teddy, and I certainly wasn't advancing the WC conclusions or anything close to them.
Hi ED.......
I am pleased to read that you are generally familiar with what little I mentioned....
In general from readings, it appears most do not defend Ted,I certainly understand.... but I also try as they say to stand in another shoes, if only momentarily..and look at the other side, of which there is it appears...... on a regular basis at least two, even with reserarch...especially as we do not really know what threats etc .......may have been made to members within the family........he is far from the only who has remained muzzled......there are many, a couple that come to mind would be the Paines, Frazier..Marina in many areas........etc...
Also the Connally's who have passed, but in his first recall stating, that 'They were going to kill them all....he later changed that to some degree as well as the Mrs.......and Jackie in not changing her clothes that day, as she mentioned words to the effect she wanted " them to see what They had done.....and also having her written recall of all, locked away till both her children are dead....why ? perhaps because of the info within, perhaps she as well knew and she knew of dire threats.....
I do not think you would be present on this F if you did defend said....W/C Alias the ( water closet )....pertaining to the L/N settlement I agree with John Judge.....
"you can call me a conspiracy theorist, if I can call you a coincidence theorist."
I share Myra's sentiments, though perhaps at a kinder level, and I'm simply trying to explore the reasons for Teddy's statements given his awareness [he had to be aware, no?] of the voluminous research that has been done since December '63, and their conclusions as expressed by so many here and elsewhere.
All has been available , IF any member of said family, wanted to persue such....but that is another area that we simply have no real knowledge of.....
I'm not, at this late hour and certainly not in this forum -- nor in the past or in any other forum --, trying to say that Oswald acted alone and that we should put the matter behind us. Quite the opposite, despite even what, for reasons that are obscure, the recently-deceased majordomo of the family said.
I do not recall mentioning in any way that you abide by the LNr crap that LHO acted alone....nor to cease researching in any regard whatever pertains to the assassination.....if I somehow gave you that impression, it was erroneous, call it brain drain within a posting....it happens with all eventually....
I agree with the thoughts recently expressed by Charles Drago.
As the protagonist in the movie Ronin said, "If there is any doubt, there can be no doubt." I'm a big fan of visceral intuition as a learning agent.
The attempts at cover-up alone tell the story.
If you look at the matter as if it were a negative of a photograph and turn it inside out and reverse the imagery, voila!.
I do think there are at times when both instinct and intelligence both compliment and can come into play within research.......epecially when one hits that brick wall, but for some unexplained reason continues to carry on.....
Thanks
B....